


Brave the Depths

by cheerynoir



Series: Drowning!verse [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Captivity, Conditioning, Dehumanization, Dissociation, F/M, Fever, Frostbite, Hypothermia, Infection, Isolation, M/M, Mutilation, POV Second Person, Pneumonia, Present Tense, Ramsay is his own warning, Rape/Non-con Elements, Someone please help Theon Greyjoy (not you Ramsay), Starvation, Theon and Jeyne's Stay at the Torture Cabin in the Woods, Theon and Robb's Dornish Vacation, flaying, human hunting (mentioned), look it's a bad time alright?, sweet summer children don't you know winter is here?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7049221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheerynoir/pseuds/cheerynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>????</i>
</p>
<p> 	Time gets hazy for a while. The nights get longer, the days get colder. Jeyne’s eyes are big and brown and full of fear. Shadows press in. Everything aches and your head spins like you’re deep underwater and craving air.</p>
<p> 	Ramsay comes often.</p>
<p>  	You can’t hold your breath much longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave the Depths

You wake and don’t know what day it is. There is frost on the boarded-shut basement windows and your breath hangs in pale clouds on every exhale. Jeyne’s tears have frozen in the fan of her eyelashes, and you rub a shaking thumb there until they melt. You nails are bitten to the quick, ragged and cracked. She smiles a little, and her lips are chewed raw. She bleeds a little, smiling. She doesn’t wince. You doubt she even feels the twinge.

You suck the salt from the pad of your thumb and do not think of the sea, or anything at all.

It was dark when you fell asleep in your meager nest of blankets, curled around Jeyne so you both wouldn’t freeze. It’s light now, or what passes for it this time of year. There’s a rattle in your lungs and your fingers ache with cold. But the bottles of water haven’t frozen, and there’s still a half a can of dog food to share. 

Ramsay was kind to leave you as much as he did. You tell yourself this desperately, and wonder if it’s time to check the rat traps in the opposite corner. You thought you heard them snapping in the dark. Meat is meat, and the canned stuff makes you gag, even after so long.

It’s another day. Time flickers. Jeyne scuttles away and returns with water. Her bruises have faded to pale yellows and greens, like spring-time made flesh. The bite marks on her breasts and shoulders have scabbed over.

Ramsay had taken most of your clothes the moment the ground had started to freeze, back when you had all your fingers and your mouth was not a ruin, so her nakedness does nothing, stirs nothing, and your own only makes you wince. 

This is how you tell time now: not by the rise and fall of the sun, not by the pulses of your heart or the wet rasp of your breath between coughing fits. You mark the days by watching your bodies heal, slowly but surely.

Jeyne curls up in the bony circle of your arms, and you do not look at yourself.

It’s better not to know.

For a little while, in the blankets with Jeyne, you’re almost warm. The water makes your belly ache, but it’s a good kind of ache.

You doze.

The quiet is broken so gradually you almost don’t notice. An engine rumbles close and cuts off. A door opens and bangs closed. Barking. The thump of many paws on frozen ground.

Jeyne pales, and you slam your eyes shut, wishing to be anywhere else. Wishing to be asleep. Wishing to be dead.

“Maybe,” she whispers, voice breaking. She hides her face in your shoulder, and you thread your remaining fingers through her lank hair. “Maybe he’s just here to run the dogs. Right, Theon? He’s done that before, loads of times. Maybe-”

Heavy boots, heavy tread. The shriek of the front door’s hinges after the lock screams open.

Your luck’s never that good.

The basement door creaks open soon enough, and his shadow is a long, inhuman thing sprawling the wooden stairs and the far wall.

“Did you miss me, pets?”

 

#

 

It’s like watching a movie. It’s like this is happening to someone else. Except you’ve never liked gory movies, regardless of what you boasted, and even the porn you watched when you were feeling filthy and desperate did not have this much blood, this many tears.

There is plenty of both by the time Ramsay is done with you.

Usually.

Today is different.

Today he coaxes Jeyne from your nest. He pries her fingers from yours gently and sweeps her into his arms. She looks as weightless and insubstantial as a bodice-ripper heroine, as a newlywed bride, and your stomach turns over sharply and cramps. You curl up, knuckles pale against your shins. You feel yourself trembling and do not watch as they go.

If you do, you’ll stare at the door. You’ll try to run. You’re bad that way, always trying to wriggle away from the boundaries Ramsay has made, the rules he has lovingly put in place.

You’d be guilty if you didn’t want to be away so badly.

This words come to you along with the sound of his feet on the stairs: 

“There we are, sweetling. Easy, now – no tears. We’re celebrating today. Can you imagine it’s been five months already?”

This isn’t the first anniversary he’s celebrated. Your own – “A year, can you imagine? An entire year since I found you on that bridge, pet,” – was a dimly-remembered haze. Wax had left blisters on your skin, and a collar had clasped tight around your throat.

He hasn’t taken it off yet. He slammed your hand in the door the only time you tried to loosen the buckle yourself.

You’re still wearing it.

Bile rises sickly sweet in your throat. Panic cramps your muscles. Jeyne is out of your sight.

Usually, that means the screams will start. Ramsay likes his privacy when he plays, until he doesn’t. He likes how it makes you cry, listening to Jeyne sob and yell, and how Jeyne shudders and claws at her ears when you’re the one under his knife.

But not today. Today is different. 

Ramsay’s girls come barrelling down the stairs and crowd you, snuffling and huffing and licking.

There is no sound from the upper floors. 

You whimper into Red Jeyne’s scruff. She licks your cheek, and that’s how you know you’re crying.

Time jerks and startles, and you don’t know how much time you lose. The shadows look different – longer, darker, like claws across the floor – when you come back to yourself.

Jeyne is back in a whirl of skin and salt and heat as she latches onto you once more, and you cling back with for an instant before Ramsay sweeps you up and away. You feel like nothing in his arms: a handful of bones and pallid flesh.

Your head is full of static. You could focus if you wanted to, but you’ve learned it’s easier not to. His words break over you like the waves over rock, and his hands are heavy on your hips, and you’re hit with a sense-memory so vivid for a moment you can almost smell the salt in the air.

A hundred years ago, two boys ran south in a car held together with duct tape and hope. Dorne had been gloriously hot, not a cloud in the sky, and in the evenings the ocean was warm as blood. They’d spent a life-time there, it felt like, the days stretching on and on like warm taffy being pulled.

The boys spent days on the beach, soaking up the sun. One burned and blistered, pale skin gone a blazing red – the other had laughed and laughed, sun-kissed, and smoothed cold hands slick with aloe gel down the other’s back. He counted the freckles he found there, and kept the numbers to himself.

The screams of the cockroaches that lived in the bathroom kept them awake, and the humidity crushed them in a clammy fist as they tossed and turned and slept naked like that would tempt a breeze. The nights were a haze of damp heat and self-contained misery. But the days – Gods, the days – had been full of white sand and laughter. The laughing boy had gone to bed tasting tequila or rum, the smell of salt and cheap soap thick in his nose. Sometimes the boys shared a bed, the world spinning too fast to separate. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they slept on the beach, and woke as the sun rose pink and gold and perfect.

“Braavos would be like this, I think. Warm. Gorgeous. We should go – you and me.”

“Hmm?”

“We should go to Braavos.”

The red-haired boy, sun-burn peeling on his nose, had laughed and tipped sideways. His head on the other’s shoulder, he was heavy and warm and the easiest weight the laughing boy had ever carried. They were too many drinks deep, and everything was muted, the edges dulled. Nothing hurt. Another day dawned, and nothing hurt.

“But Braavos is for lovers,” the red-head giggled. 

_We should be that, too._

But even a life-time ago, you hadn’t said it. You kept the words trapped behind your teeth, heavy on your tongue.

When you open your eyes again, you ache violently. Your lungs rattle with every inhale, and snag on every sigh. Coughing makes pain spike like a heart attack, like drowning in salt water. The cold sinks deep to the heart of you, frost crawling along your bones. 

One of your teeth is cracked. You have three new bruises on your ribs, and a bite-mark on your neck that hasn’t scabbed yet. One of your fingers is crooked, and you can’t bend it without causing more pain. Your face feels hot and swollen under your shaking fingertips. You shiver and shiver and cannot get warm.

You’re back in the basement. 

“Did…” 

You voice is a hoarse thing, as ragged as the remains of your fingernails. You swallow – wincing at the scrape of your dry throat – and try again: 

“Did he…”

“He put you back,” Jeyne replies softly. She shuffles a little closer. The wounds on her chest and neck have started to scab, the blood drying to black in the gloom. “After. Said he was gentle. Was he?”

“I don’t remember.”

“…Good,” says Jeyne. She lays her fingers on your cheek and you flinch away. Pain registers dimly.

Jeyne looks away, fingers curling tight.

Ramsay didn’t leave a flashlight this time, so when the shadows close in, you are left in darkness.

 

#

 

Days pass.

Weeks.

Years.

Lifetimes could slide past in a haze of crystallised cold and bruises that never seem to heal, and you would suck in another lungful of air and let it out coughing wetly.

You and Jeyne stop talking, between one visit and the next. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything to say when you can communicate so clearly without. She sleeps with her head on your chest, and you hum tunelessly into her hair for a time. It’s good enough.

Time jitters and skips. Shadows crawl along the walls.

Eventually, you start coughing up blood-tinged slime. It should probably be more worrying than it is. But you ran out of dog food three days ago, and you think the rats have frozen to death.

“Jeyne,” you say weakly. The room feels too hot and too cold in turns. When you kick out of the nest, sweat-drenched, Jeyne cries and tries to wrap you back into the blankets before your sweat can freeze. “Jeyne.”

It feels good to say her name. Eons have slid past without you noticing. It’s been too long since you said anything.

“Theon – hey Theon,” she says. Her hands shake, and she wipes your sweat-slick hair back out of your eyes. It’s getting long. It’s getting white. Her hands feel good, so you close your eyes again.

“Missed that,” you say. Your teeth chatter, your shivers make your wasted muscles hurt. “Missed…”

“Theon, Theon, Theon-”

It’s been too long since you heard that. You were starting to forget.

Outside, the dogs howl and run. Outside, Ramsay gives chase. Tonight, the girls will eat well, and Ramsay will treat you kindly.

There will be another puppy with a girl’s name come spring-time.

You wonder if you’ll live to see it.

 

#

 

Once, before the frost came, the sunlight was warm as the melted butter you used to dip crab legs in with Asha on one side of you and your mother on the other.

Once, before the trees shed their leaves and the ice crawled under your skin to stay, you were angry. That was almost as good as the sunshine, looking back.

Once, in that buttery-warm sunlight, you hit Ramsay in the face. A closed-fist with ringed fingers from a handful of inches away. You grew up in foster care, you grew up on the Iron Islands; you know how to throw a punch.

His nose broke with a muted crunch and a gush of blood.

You made it to the main road before he tackled you to the dirt and dragged you kicking and screaming back into the cabin.

He took your rings for that.

He took the skin off your pinky, too. The one on your right hand.

Then, his pale eyes fevered with rage, his nose still bleeding sluggishly, he’d left you and Jeyne locked in the woodshed.

By the time he came back, you were fevered and sweating and your pinky was green at the edges. You were screaming at the shadows trying to gouge out your eyes, and the embers blazed in your hand:

“Make it stop, make it stop! Jeyne, please!”

Your mouth was thick with the taste of your own blood and the sour tang of putrid flesh. You had tried – and failed – to help yourself.

What else was new?

Ramsay did what you could not. He did what Jeyne would not.

He made the pain stop. With a hatchet and a knife so hot it blazed red, he made the pain stop.

You hate that you were grateful. You hate the look of your hands. 

Five fingers, slim and well-kept, on your left hand. Four on your right.

But there was something like worry in Ramsay’s eyes, and he had lingered for days, checking and re-checking the wound, the bandages. 

The next time he flayed you, he brought clean water, antiseptic cream, and a roll of fresh bandage.

“What do we say, when I am kind to you?”

Your voice was raw and wet, your throat a ruin. Your own blood painted your grimy skin, and he sets down a knife with a lover’s care. You used to have a tattoo on your chest of a pirate ship being destroyed by a kraken. Now you have a glistening wet patch that makes your nerves shriek and wail.

“…Thank you, Ramsay.”

“Good boy.”

 

#

 

You come awake all at once, like someone was screaming nearby. The edges of your memories are frayed, ragged things, but the heat of sunshine and the dull blaze of infection echo like whispers across your nerves.

You shudder.

“Jeyne,” you mutter. The world is dark and full of howling. A storm shakes the cabin to its foundations. Her name hangs in the air in a damp cloud. You feel it brush against your lips.

You drag in a breath and your lungs seem to slosh. If feels like you’re drowning on dry land. 

“ _Jeyne._ ”

“I’m here. I’m h-”

Glass shatters somewhere above you, muted. She whimpers and you can’t bite back a yelp. You clutch at each other – your right hand aches dully. Phantom pain.

The cabin groans under the weight of so much snow, and the storm rages.

“What was that? It sounded like glass.”

“It was nothing,” you say. “Just the wind.”

“No, Theon, I – I heard it.”

Your heart beats triple time.

“You don’t know what you heard, Poole,” you say, cotton-mouthed. Your eyes flick to the stairs. To the cellar door.

Nothing good happens when you go through that door.

“It’s nothing,” you say, high and breaking. “The door’s locked. You know it is. He always locks it at night.”

“But Theon that was glass! I hear it- if the storm broke a window-”

“Or _he_ just dropped a glass refilling it,” you bite out.

But Jeyne crawls out of the nest like a woman possessed. Her skin is very pale in the gloom, white like it’s never seen the sun before. With another racking cough, you gather what you can of the nest around you and stumble after.

The touch of your bare feet on the lowest stair makes your lungs freeze and your breath hitch. Fear curls low in your belly, but you take another step and another breath, and another, until you can catch Jeyne’s arm where she stands stock-still in the middle of the staircase.

“Jeyne,” you says, but quietly. Your eyes flick to the door, steadfastly shut. There’s cold blue light flickering under the crack. 

“Theon,” she replies. You tighten your grip. “I heard it, I did.”

“We can’t.”

“We have to. Or in the spring he’ll take us running, you know he will.”

The protests rise up like bile on your tongue; Ramsay liked you enough to keep you, he loved you both, he wouldn’t-

In another lifetime, you thought he wouldn’t cheat on you, and while he probably technically hadn’t – you refuse to call Jeyne anything other than a victim to him – what he had done was worse.

He would.

He _would_.

“The girls would like that,” you say. Jeyne flinches.

You keep a hold of her arm as you press up the stairs. Your knees ache. Your heart hammers against your ribs. Each breath feels like you take it through wet canvas.

You stand huddled at the top of the steps, breathing raggedly. You clutch Jeyne with one hand and clasp the other over your mouth, to muffle the wet rasp of your breathing. A cough builds in your throat, but you swallow and swallow and try to ignore it.

The blue light flickers, the low murmur of the television presses. Nothing moves. 

The last time you tried this – the only time Ramsay had found you in the cottage without him around to supervise – he’d flayed another tattoo from your back and threatened to cut off your feet. Jeyne’s too.

You look down. Your toes are long and grimy, your ankles nearly skeletal. You curl your toes against the step, just to feel the wood against your soles.

You glance at Jeyne from the corner of your eye, and see her face – grimy, scared, but resolute - in the glow. She looks bloodless, a girl carved from grimy marble or drift-wood gone white with wear and age. Her eyes are wet.

“Do it,” she mouths.

Carefully, slowly, you pry your hand from your mouth and rest it on the door. The wood is warm under your palm, the grain catching a little on the pads of your fingers.

You shut your eyes and swallow hard. You do not breathe as you curl your fingers around the doorknob.

It twists easily, and the door opens on silent hinges.

For a second, you think you’re hallucinating, or dreaming, or dead.

But Jeyne crowds you, and you stumble, falling up. You catch yourself in the hall, and straighten.

There’s a hysterical sort of relief in your chest and you look around. The hallway is small and narrow, but it is a kingdom compared to the basement.

The air is warm, brushing against your goose-pimpled skin.

He hadn’t locked the door.

How long had it been since he had to?

_He thought he could keep us. He thought we were broken._

A giggle builds in your throat and spills between your broken teeth.

It isn’t too far from reality, really. You feel splintered.

Jeyne’s fingernails dig bloody crescents into your arm. You smother your laughter as best you can and start to shuffle down the hall. The first door you come to is a bathroom, stark and sterile. The second is a linen closet that smells of mothballs.

You wrap a faded quilt around Jeyne without thinking.

The cottage is quiet – so quiet, save for the storm.

The next room is a bedroom, and you nearly run right back down to the basement when you realize.

But the room is empty, dim, and warm. Like the cave of some beast, left unattended.

The bed is mussed. The air smells of Ramsay’s cologne and wet dog. 

There are clothes in the dresser, and Jeyne fumbles getting you into them. The pants are too short, the sweaters are too long in the arms, but the socks fit well enough. Your pull on as many pairs as you can find, split the heavy wool between you and Jeyne and try not to make noise as you claw your way into layers of denim and wool and flannel and cotton.

You half-expect Ramsay to kick in the door and declare it’s all been a game, and they’ve been very naughty, pets.

You keep looking at the door, tense and shaky.

You dress, and Jeyne dresses, and you look at her in the dimness and cannot help but think how strange it is to see her clothed.

_He would hate it._

The realization comes like a hammer blow between your eyes. Your face hurts, and it takes a second to realize you’re smiling. Grinning.

_Good._

Rustling and waddling, you shuffle from the bedroom with Jeyne, your fingers clinging and entangled, your breathing harsh and fast. There is only one place to go, and it is down the hall. 

Toward the flickering light. Toward the quiet sounds of snores and the buzz of a television turned low. Toward the breath of cold air that claws through a broken window.

“Theon,” she breathes, or perhaps you imagine it.

But it your name you hear, and it is enough.

“We’ll be quick,” you reply.

The living room is awash in cold blue light. The scene a familiar tableau: the girls, all seven of them, flopped on the floor or the sofa or the chair, huffing and chasing rabbits in their sleep; the television showing nothing but static on low; six empty beer bottles stood up like soldiers at attention; and in the midst of it all, snoring and slack-faced, is Ramsay.

Your stomach swoops and churns, and you wish you could hate him.

But he looks soft and vaguely harmless, in that cold blue light. He looks like the intense boy who found you on the side of a bridge – the kind of boy who’d buy you breakfast and fuck you so sweetly you could sleep through the night, who’d share his cigarettes and buy your favourite liquor for no reason at all.

No reason save the chip in your tooth, the blood on your pillow, the pain in your ass.

You give your head a shake and turn away.

Snow brushes your cheeks like cold, damp fingers and you flinch away before you can help it.

You’ve never been built for the cold.

Jeyne pulls the quilt tight around her and you hurry toward the window. You scuff the glass out of the way with a socked foot and hide your hands in your sleeves to pry out the rest. The fabric softens the crack of glass as it splinters, but can do nothing about the wood as it screams when you pry it from the outer wall.

You freeze though, glancing over your shoulder hurriedly. 

Ramsay snores and shifts minutely. His head lolls back, and his neck is a bared, vulnerable thing. It would take no effort to break it.

But Red Jeyne lifts her head from his lap and stares.

She wuffs, very softly. You lift a hand like that might ward her off. Your hand trembles, a leaf in a hurricane.

“Shh,” You hear yourself as if from under water. “Shhh, girl. ‘s s’ok.”

Jeyne stares at you, and shuffles closer. She takes over where you have faltered, and the storm seems to swell as the boards come loose, nails gleaming wickedly.

Red Jeyne’s tall begins, slowly, to wag. She wuffs again, a little louder. Around the room, her sisters stir.

“Shh shh,” you murmur. “Go back to sleep.”

You come closer, brain screaming, until you’re close enough that you can hear Ramsay’s quiet inhale. Until your shadow falls over him like a shroud. Until you can see the way his pulse beats in his long, pale neck.

Your fingers twitch.

Until you can rest a shaking hand on Red Jeyne’s broad head and pat her.

Her tail beats against the sofa cushions, and her head drops back into Ramsay’s lap.

From the corner of your eye, you see Jeyne wretch the last board from its moorings. The wind cuts into the cabin, and you shudder.

Ramsay stirs, and you don’t breathe. Your heart pounds so loud and so fast you think you’re having a heart attack.

“Theon,” Jeyne whispers.

You give Red Jeyne a final pat and sidle backward without looking away from Ramsay’ face. His eyelashes flutter, eyelids twitching.

“Go,” you mumble. You trip a little over the carpet and motion wildly. Jeyne doesn’t move. “ _Go._ ”

“Not without you.”

You make it to Jeyne, trembling hard. The air cuts your cheeks and your lungs seem to freeze and shrivel in your chest. Ramsay groans softly, lifts a hand.

You boost her through the window, quilt and all, and don’t look back when you follow her out.

As you haul yourself through, you hear a ripping sound and feel a wash of heat across your belly. It doesn’t seem important when you’re fighting to breathe and your heart beats at triple-time.

“What-”

Ramsay’s awake – groggy, but conscious. 

You catch Jeyne’s hand in your own, grip it tight. The snow it up to your knees and the layers do nothing about the cold. You double over to cough, and blood splatters the snow.

“Run,” you gasp, tears pricking your eyes. “Run!”

Her eyes are huge and terrified, but she hauls you after her when she starts towards the woods. You think she might be trying to dislocate your shoulder and don’t care.

As long as you don’t have to go back to the basement, she could cut your arm off and you’d thank her for the pleasure.

You run. Snow closes around you both like a fist, like death.

The storm blots out the rest.

 

#

 

You don’t know how long you run for, or how many times you trip. You wipe the snow out of your eyes with numb fingers and press on. Jeyne wraps you both in the stolen quilt and you slog together through the trees like a lumbering, three-legged animal.

Dogs bark, the sound of it curiously distant through the wind.

You flinch and start, swallowing the words that want to spill from between your teeth: Do you hear that? Are they coming? Will there be a pair of hounds with our names come spring?

Jeyne whimpers and stumbles over a branch buried in the snow. She falls. Splayed out on the ground like an offering, her foot points the wrong way.

“Theon, Theon,” she gasps, and does not let you go. Tears blur your vision. 

For half a second, you think of leaving her.

A quick death in a blizzard would be a kinder fate than anything Ramsay could ever give.

But you stoop and between the two of you, you manage to get Jeyne onto your back. Wet and snowy, the quilt is more dead-weight than comfort, but you don’t let it go.

You cough freely, legs protesting, lungs screaming. Jeyne’s heavy, but you cannot let go.

The world has been reduced to the foot in front of you that you can see, the scream of the storm, and the cold. Always the cold.

Your stagger downhill, winding between trees and stones and shadows, and nearly collapse when you hit level ground. You slog through it and cannot feel your feet, your fingers, your nose. The snow crawls past your knees. Every muscle screams, every stitch of clothing you stole weighs your down like lead. 

The path continues. You keep walking.

A road, you think at last, when the only hazard is the snow and the ice and the cold. No twists, no turns. No trees to run into. Just the snow.

You can’t hear the dogs anymore. 

Your socked foot hit a path of ice under the snow. You fall and Jeyne howls in your ear when your jar her. For a long moment, you lay your cheek on the snow and think about going to sleep.

But you do see a light – a pair of lights. Weak and flickering, but there.

“Jeyne,” you say. You do not recognize your own voice. “Jeyne, look.”

You lock your knees and push yourself up again. It hurts.

_Keep going._

The lights get closer, slowly but surely.

You’re either dying, or that’s a car. 

_It could be Ramsay’s car-_

You push the thought out of your mind with a high, distressed sound. The car gets closer, low to the ground, the hi-beams more yellow than blue. Ramsay usually has a truck when he brings the girls up.

It could be Ramsay – but. But.

But your grip on Jeyne falters. You ease her down into the snow, her back against a tall weirwood tree. Its red eyes stare down at you, impassive.

“Don’t – don’t you leave me! Theon!”

“There’s a car,” he said. “I’m going to – I’m going to flag it down.”

“What if it’s him?”

“It’s not. Jeyne, it’s not believe me.”

You don’t even believe you. It’s a wonder she ever lets you go. 

You stagger, off-balance and numb. You wait, stock-still, and when the car gets close enough, you throw yourself into the middle of the road.

Brakes scream. The storm screams. You scream.

 

#

 

Getting hit by a car hurts less than you thought it would. This is probably because the car was going about three miles an hour to navigate the storm, and also because you cannot feel anything, really. Your body feels like frozen meat.

But you come back to yourself on the ground, squinting at the tires of a black car. There is blood in the snow, and you investigate your ruin of a mouth. You taste hot copper, and know you bit yourself when you fell.

Someone is touching you. The fact makes you panic and thrash, whimpering, until something occurs to you through the haze of animal fear.

The hands on you are – different. Odd. Hard from work and cold, but – careful. You squint down at them, and see that whoever has you does not have fingernails, and their fingers are short and stubby and tan. 

Not like Ramsay’s hands. 

You let out a cackle that makes the man – and it is a man, the person who hit you – flinch. He wears a thick downy coat and a hat pulled low. But his eyes are wide and worried and brown, what little you can see of his face weathered and hard. 

He has Jeyne’s eyes.

“Thank you,” you say, and clutch at him. “Thank you. Please don’t take me back. Kill me before you give me back to him please. Please I can’t-”

“Lad,” he shouts to be heard over the storm. He shakes you off and undoes his coat; wraps you in it tightly. “The only place I’m taking you is a hospital. Come on, up you get, can you walk?”

You find your feet, staggering and watery-kneed as a drunk. But when the man tries to pull you to his car you twist away, take two steps, and fall again.

“Not without her! Not without Jeyne!”

When he only looks at you like you’ve lost your mind – a fair assumption, to be sure – you clutch at his sweater and drag him to the tree.

Jeyne reaches for you, the tip of her nose black, her fingers curled to palm like she can’t help it.

“Theon!”

You fold into her, grateful that her eyes are wide and brown and alive, but fall when you try to carry her.

The man in the hat takes her from you with a grunt, and you cling to his arm. He carries Jeyne, not like she weighs nothing, but as though she is heavy and so, so precious. 

You stagger and stumble back to the car. By some miracle, it is still running.

A black-haired woman and a child with a ruined face stare at you when you and Jeyne fold into the back seat, clutching at each other. A weather warning blares soft and blurred with static over the radio. It barely takes a moment before the woman is passing her coat and the girl is trying to touch you – rub your neck.

You flinch back and crack your head against the window. There are no words, only animal sounds, high and scared.

The girl doesn’t try again, and Jeyne pets clumsy-numb fingers over your arms. You think you’re moving – you think the car is crawling through the snow.

Dimly, you think you hear the man in the hat asking someone named Mariya to call the hospital, the nearest hospital, and tell them they’re on their way. There’s a murmured reply, like waves on rock: “Can’t … the signal … the storm …”

It’s almost lost under the riptide that is the girl: she talks fast and high about the books she’s reading, the ones for school and the ones for pleasure. She talks about the protagonist of one, a young girl with red hair and a big mouth, but cheerful, and so lively and lovely and-

The air is so hot you smother a cry in your red, shaking hands. Snow melts in your hair. Jeyne begins to cry softly, the ice melting from her eyes like spring time, like rain.

Your nerves are on fire. The heat of the car scalds you. Jeyne’s face is cool when you wipe clumsily as her tears.

“Thank you,” you say, and your voice is so even it scares you a little. The girl breaks off mid-word. The man with the hat, the man behind the wheel, looks at you in the rear-view mirror. You try to smile, and wince when his eyes only widen, horrified. He flinches. Blood runs hotly down your chin, and another wave of sickness overtakes you. Your lungs spasm.

Jeyne is in your lap, you cough and cough and cough into her shoulder, tears pricking your eyes and sliding down your cheeks to dampen her sodden sweater. You clutch at her, and she clutches back just as tightly.

Gasping, crying, only one thought runs through your mind. It’s the only thing you can say, wet and ragged and pained:

“ _Thank you_.”

Everything after that is a blur.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while, huh? Sorry for anyone that's been waiting - things have been crazy.
> 
> There are two or three segments left to this monster, so keep an eye out.
> 
> This bit has been unbeta'd, though, so if you see any mistakes, please let me know.
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.cheerynoir.tumblr.com/)!


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